working@ the Industrial Religion Garage

Class awareness in religion begins with the historical division of all societies into two religious classes: leaders (clergy) and followers (laity).
To ignore this fundamental class division of clergy and laity in order to focus on differences of economic social privileges in a largely white, well-educated and wealthy denomination is simple evasion by the privileged class and its supporters.

a play on the wiki on egalitarianism & equality logo with the one U of Unitarianism & Universalism placed sideways as part of the equals sign & the edges of the one circle hollowed out to become two concentric circles.

On the facebook group “UUs for Class Awareness“(Working group for examining classism -within- Unitarian Universalism) page the other day ( i wrote: “UUism … promotes the clergy/laity class system … that [includes] collective Christian privilege … in extra votes at General Assembly”. One person replied: “clergy do not get extra votes at GA.”

The ‘extra’ is covered in the same section, part b: “Additional Delegates – The following religious professionals serving/affiliated with certified congregations may also be delegates”

Minister Delegates and Religious Education Director Delegates. Each certified member congregation is also entitled to be represented at each General Assembly by the ordained minister or ministers in ministerial fellowship with the Association settled in such congregation, and by the director or directors of religious education having achieved Credentialed Religious Education – Master Level status by the Association and employed in such congregation. – UUA Bylaws IV General Assembly § 4.8 Delegates. b.

The term i use, ‘extra’, is a valid synonym for ‘Additional’, the term the UUA uses.

Congregations have always had the choice of sending any of their member staff to General Assembly as delegates. But the UUA, as the AUA & UCA before it, has always incorporated clergy class privilege as voting delegates at GA in addition to/apart from regular congregational “lay” representation.

Attention is called to the fact that in the U.C.A. all ordained ministers have the voting privilege, whether settled, retired, in other positions, or currently without a church or a position, while in the A.U.A. only ministers settled in churches can be members.
– An Information Manual for the use of Unitarian and Universalist Churches, Societies and Fellowships in Considering The Question of Merger or Alternatives To Merger, Prepared Under the Auspices of the Joint Commission on Merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, Massachusetts 1958, chapter VI, National Organization of the Two Denominations

In an association of independent organizations, it is logical for organizations to elect their voting representatives to annual national gatherings. It is equally reasonable for the association to qualify additional voting delegates through some other process. But if the election of representatives is regular, the addition of other voting representatives is irregular and should be explained. In the case of the UUA, the addition of clergy voting privilege is explained by historical precedent (ie, grandfathered in from the American Unitarian Association and Universalist Church of America that merged in 1961).

As we try to move toward better democracy (or at least like to think we do), most of european society got rid of its 2nd Estate – the nobility. Democratic revolutions in America & France left the 1st Estate – the clergy – untouched. It’s time to push for more democratic reform in religion, to demythologize (eg, ‘ordination’) and get rid of the 1st Estate, and raise up new models of religious leaders as the Radical Reformation of 500 years ago proposed.

The UUA has admitted, in a very minor way, that it is not a very democratic organization. And it seeks your opinion to help it decide which way it should try to solve it. As all questions do, the UUA frames the issue into a very small area of how it wants to practice democracy at its annual General Assembly of delegates from UU congregations. And while it asks a question about reducing the number of congregational delegates from some to one, it does not suggest eliminating ministers as congregations’ extra special delegates. Nor does it explain that reducing the number of ‘lay’ delegates would greatly increase the proportion of ‘clergy’ delegates, presenting the potential for the UUA to become an even more clergy-dominated denomination.

Peter Bowden at UU Growth Lab asks “How are we as Unitarian Universalists and as UU congregations called to show up in response to Ferguson?”

my response: stop the ‘Privileged Brightly Colored White Religious Leaders Go Slumming aka Visit a Black Hotspot’ meme. give up the White Christian Clergy Privilege.
copy black & brown resistance.
Resist.
get stopped by the police in your car, roll the window down an inch, tell the cop you fear for your life, deny them search, then fear for your life & do only what’s required by law. get arrested in a real way on your own real unplanned worst time.
live it. don’t fake it.

__________________________________________________resistance is the secret of joy
– Alice Walker

from Tom Schade’s blog ‘The Lively Tradition’, “writing about Unitarian Universalism’s Public Ministry and Public Theology. Standing at the intersection of UUism and the history of the present. Also, by necessity, UU growth.”, www.tomschade.com/2014/10/why-no-national-uu-call-to-ferguson.html

__________________________________________________
ps. what else you can do:
use your own funds to send a black or brown member of your
congregation, or a neighboring congregation, to go to Ferguson.
give hir your own clerical collar & stole to wear there to promote
‘the priesthood of all believers’ & class equity.

at 58 i have experienced the crest of life’s hill and am feeling the pull, the increased gravity, of the downward slope. my body’s metabolism has kicked over into lower gear, and i wish my dad&mom, and all my ancestors & relatives, had written down more things for us kids to mull over as we got older. so i write here, hoping the internet will be a better, easier library for my kids & nieces&nephews to access these little radical ideas when their writer is gone in twenty years or so. … knowing that if i don’t say it now, it will forever remain unsaid. at least by me, here, now.

this is also both a more accessible outlet than facebook, especially for UUs who don’t go that way, and more private & less offensive than engaging friends & family at ‘church’ & ‘back home’ every time we meet. this way i can play nice in meat space, and verbalize here in virtual reality, where the two forms rarely meet. (inadvertent pun noted;)